In large corporations and institutions, computer networks today are generally comprised of many different data management systems and thus provide a heterogeneous landscape. Moreover, over time, such data management systems frequently become more and more heterogeneous, as new systems are integrated into the landscape and existing systems are updated.
Such data management systems may store and provide data in any number of different data formats. The use of standard messaging technologies, like extended markup language (XML), facilitates the providing and exchanging data between different systems with reduced difficulty; however, not all data management systems use standardized formats and languages. Therefore, many times when a client requests data from a server, the relevant data may first have to be converted from one format to another before it is transmitted from the server to the client.
Sometimes, manual hard coding of the necessary conversion routines is done for transmitting converted data from a server to a client. Hard coding of the conversion routines, however, is costly, inflexible, and labour intensive. As a result, rather than manually change a hard-coded conversion routine, it is common practice to provide more data to the client than actually necessary and relevant for the particular client. This practice consumes bandwidth and produces traffic that is not necessary.
Automatic translation code generation would provide the data requested by the client in an appropriate data format and allow transfer of only the relevant data, thus saving bandwidth. One example of a known code generator is described in Christian Georgescu, “Code Generation Templates Using XML and XSL”, C/C++ Users Journal, January 2002, p. 6-19. In Georgescu, an implementation of XML or XSL for Java and C++ code generation is discussed. These code generators allow generation of C++ or Java computer code from a data set of a different data format. A meta-model of the provided data provides a structure for an information model that comprises data in XML-format. Using the meta-model, a design logic may be coded in XSL for generating implementation logic that allows a code generator to code the information model into a different data format without manual labour.
However, even with known code generators, it is not possible to react automatically to changes within a data format required by a client. The known code generators alone do not provide automatic adaptation to changes in a data object model, e.g a data format, on the side of the client.